Time to review one of the most pointless remakes ever. The original Total Recall isn't even 25 years old.

The best performance comes from, surprisingly enough, Kate Beckinsale. She's a beautiful woman, but she's never been much of an actress. However, she's great as a villainess. Not as good as Sharon Stone in the original, but with a movie this bland, you gotta take all the positives you can get. Also good is Bryan Cranston as the Ronny Cox role. He's not as good as Cox, but again, you gotta take all the positives you can get.

Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel are bland as the leads. Ah-nuld isn't much of an actor but, when given a role that plays to his strength like in the original Total Recall, he's very entertaining. Farrell and Biel aren't entertaining, they're boring. The action scenes in this film are very boring. Len Wiseman's career has been very spotty. Live Free Or Die Hard was good, but the Underworld movies were crap. After watching this movie, it's clear that Live Free Or Die Hard is the anomaly here.

Easily the worst thing about the film is the script. It's moronic and boring. The worst thing about it is how it is how serious it is. One of the things that made the original Total Recall and Paul Verhoeven's other movies great was their sense of humor. In its quest to be as serious as it could, it also tried to be realistic by removing the mutants. However, removing the mutants causes several glaring plot holes. For example, in the original Quato had psychic powers, which is why they had to erase Hauser's memory. In this one, Quato has no psychic powers, which makes erasing Hauser's mind make no Goddamn sense. In addition, the three-boobed hooker has no reason to exist. It was only done in a craven attempt to try and get fans of the original to watch this crappy new version.

One of the more irritating things about the movie was all the interviews were the stars talked down to the original. Paul Verhoeven was angered by this. Thankfully, Verhoeven had the last laugh: this Total Recall got out-grossed by the original... in 1990 dollars!

Even more than Red Dawn, I dislike the idea of remaking Total Recall, because the original was a good, fun movie. That said, I imagine that the reason for remaking Total Recall was because of (1) the money and (2) because they can make the three-boobed woman look more realistic. I mean, there's the three-boobed woman at the end of the credits in Good Luck Chuck (no, that movie is not at all worth watching just to see what I'm talking about) that looked realistic, so why not remake Total Recall so that character looks all the more better. . . .

I'm joking about reason #2, of course. Actually, I'm shaking my head wondering if that could have actually entered the calculus of justifying this movie. . . .

And sometimes too hard. Seriously, Ebert giving a rotten review to Robot
& Frank, which as of right now has a 90% fresh and 89% audience
approval, and giving a fresh one to Total Recall with 32% rotten critic
and audience reviews is .
In his review for Robot&Frank he is kind of convincing us of flaws, while calling Total Recall "well crafted" and almost excusing the flaws.

Originally posted by Vits

While I
mostly respect those critics, they do go easy on movies from time to
time. You can tell because their arguements are less about explaining
the flaws and more about convincing us why the flaws exist.

While I mostly respect those critics, they do go easy on movies from time to time. You can tell because their arguements are less about explaining the flaws and more about convincing us why the flaws exist. In this case, I'd say they follow a rule some critics use: when judging a remake, they judge it on it's own (pretending they don't know what's going to happen), and then add or substract points depending on what it does to improve or not the original film.

I can't believe Richard Roeper AND Roger Ebert gave this mess of a remake a fresh review. Looking at Roeper's Rotten Tomatoe resumee, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/richard-roeper/ , on his display site alone he gave a fresh review to 11 (!) rotten movies! Tastes can be different, but as he's a Top Critic I would expect him to be a little more inline, if movies are so obvioulsy rotten. Just an observation of mine, even if the agreement meter is in the 70ies for both of them.If you look at Peter Travers site for example, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/peter-travers/, he is way more inline with the general concensus of a movie lately.

Why would you assume our Worst Prequel/Remake/Rip-Off/Sequel category has to be for only one type of bad movie and not include the other?? Maybe that's why you've not received an answer -- to my thinking, either/both types of lazy movie-making should be dis-honored here.

Sometimes, a movie is bad overall but it improves something the original had. So I just wanted to know the purpose of the award. But your statement was your answer.

Originally posted by Head RAZZberry

Also, if you say TOTAL RECALL qualifies for consideration as both/either kind of bad movie, why would you suggest that it be nominated in only this one category? Please feel free to explain your thinking either below this text or in a new posting...

If I judge it as a stand alone movie, it's passable. If I compare it to the original, I'd say it ruins some of its most important aspects. So overall, I found it to be on the same level as the original: bad but not the worst. Now that I think about it, maybe it should be up for Worst Screenplay too.

I recommend movies I gave 0 and 1 stars for Worst Picture, and movies I gave 0, 1 and 2 stars for categories like Worst Remake or Sequel, Worst Excuse for a [Genre] Movie, etc. It makes more sense mathematically, because those categories are for more specific movies, which narrows down the possibilities.

I went to the movies and saw this. I wasn't planning to, but I went with my grandpa and my 10-year-old cousin, so there weren't many options).

For years I've asked (and gotten no answer) if the Worst Remake/Sequel award is for (A) The worst movies which happen to be remakes or sequels or (B) The remakes or sequels that are bad compared to the originals. This time it doesn't matter, because this movie is both. So I think it should definitely be nominated for that award. But nothing else.

RESPONSE from Head RAZZberry: Why would you assume our Worst Prequel/Remake/Rip-Off/Sequel category has to be for only one type of bad movie and not include the other?? Maybe that's why you've not received an answer -- to my thinking, either/both types of lazy movie-making should be dis-honored here.

Also, if you say TOTAL RECALL qualifies for consideration as both/either kind of bad movie, why would you suggest that it be nominated in only this one category? Please feel free to explain your thinking either below this text or in a new posting...

Vits, the trailer showed the three boobed lady. When a trailer shows something, it's fair game, and doesn't need a "spoiler whiteout."

As for why she's still here, it was one of the iconic scenes from the first one. In the commentary track I mentioned a few posts above, that's all Ah-nuld seems to talk about when Paul Verhoeven isn't saying "izznit?". The fact that they had to put the three boobed lady shows how serious they were about adapting the original story. I wouldn't mention this except that they said they wanted this to be more faithful.

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